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A Book Review of Brenda Elsagher’s I’d Like To Buy A Bowel Please Ostomy A to Z (2006) I recently had the opportunity to hear Brenda Elsagher’s offbeat presentation. She is a stand-up comedian, a parent and wife, an author, a public speaker and advocate, an ostomate, and runs her own business. She is also highly involved in her community. Does she live a full life after her surgery? I’ll leave that for you to decide.

My name is Jan Madaffri, and I am 31 years old. I only knew my husband four months before my ileostomy surgery. At that time, I had a J-pouch which was slowly failing since July 1991. In January, 1990, I received my first ileostomy due to ulcerative colitis, then later reversed to the J-pouch. I wasn’t in pain anymore from ulcerative colitis, but I was unable to control my bowel movements. This put a big damper on my social life, being a prisoner to a toilet.

As we stated in yesterday's article, being an active part of our Health Care Provider Team is the fi

We as humans aren’t perfect. While this may not be a grand revelation for most of us, it certainly applies to all of us. Even those of us in the medical industry are not exempt from the daily mistakes that we make in our day to day lives. When our favorite drink is messed up at our local coffee house, we simply have it fixed and nothing terrible happens. However if your Doctor or Health Care Provider makes a mistake,

If during the course of your surgery, your rectum and anus were removed; you have what is called a P

“How do I get my pouch to work with the creases in my abdomen?” “How do I get a difficult pouch to stick?” “What can I do to pouch a retracted stoma?” These are just some of the questions heard from ostomates on a daily basis, the world over. With the help of these tips today, hopefully you can avoid come of the common challenges that face anyone with an ostomy. When in doubt, always contact your medical team. They know your individual needs better than anyone and together you can improve your day to day

Ostomy Help: Coping with Infection It is true that our bodies contain many normal bacteria; we do not live in a sterile world. We humans have a natural immunity to many of these organisms; some are even helpful in keeping down growth of more harmful bacteria.

Sooner or later, we will all have a situation that calls for a hospitalization.  While a hospit

One of the current and more frustrating problems facing a new ostomate today is the shortened hospit

Express Medical Supply, a discount medical supply store, works with a lot of people who have had an